Moving to R

I have finished my third week of introductory classes on R using RStudio and I must say I'm a converted. I know R can be disproportionately complicated to do a few simple things (such as pie charts or box plot) and I noticed how it can be discouraging because of that. However, it can also turn complicated ideas into just a few simple code lines (a good example). It's extreamily flexible. So I've decided I'm gradually moving to R. I know it will take some time, but it will eventually be completed.

As a consequence, from now on we'll have more R-related posts convering useful tips for urban and demographic studies.


note. I was first introduced to SPSS during my Sociology undergrad. And even though I have had SAS classes and a little contact with STATA, I got stuck with SPSS. I know I shouldn't be saying this out loud. But I'm ready to move on now.


Related Links:

• Resources for Getting Started with R
• R for SAS and SPSS Users (oops!)
• R-oriented Google's search engine
• Plotting in R and the accompanying R source code

Disabled Population in Mexico City

The spatial distribution of disabled population in Mexico City.

[click on the image to enlarge it]

Related Link:

• Race and ethnicity mapped

Miniature Melbourne

Why do I like tilt-shift time-lapse videos so much? I think it's because these kinds of shots give us a sensation that we could get the big picture of how things work  when of course we can't 

Latin American Human Mortality Database

Some of you have probably heard about the Human Mortality Database. Now, Prof. B. Piedad Urdinola (National University of Colombia) and Prof. Bernardo Lanza Queiroz (Cedeplar/UFMG, Brazil) have recently started a new project with a similar idea but covering Latin American countries. It's the Latin American Human Mortality Database.

It brings tons of information and it's really well organized with easy navigation.

"At present the database contains detailed information on mortality for five countries in Latin America: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Peru. All information is broken down by age, sex, region and cause of death. Additionally there is information on the academic literature on the study of mortality for these same countries."

Long live the project!

Urban Picture

Brooklyn Bridge (1914)

[Image Credit: Eugene de Salignac via Daily Mail]

Assorted Links

1. Sim Paulo - Sao Paulo's transport system modelled in SimCity (by Mike Rose via Drunkeynesian)
   
   
2. Sociology/Demography Vacancies at Cambridge University
   
   
3. Brazil’s bottlenecks (via Matheus Stivali)
   
   
4. Brazilian universities should be considering something similar to this
   
   
5. 10 strange houses (via C. Blattman)
   
   
6. Using unusual surnames and other tricks to gauge intergenerational mobility
   
   
7. Income inequality, as seen from space
   
   
8. Urbanization and Migration Externalities in China (via UrbaChina)
   
   
9. What will your last 10 years look like? (better with no sound)

An experimental confirmation of the Spatial Mismatch Hypothesis

Self-recommending: Getting to Work: Experimental Evidence on Job Search and Transportation Costs, by David Phillips.

Abstract:

In urban areas job vacancies often exist but poor, minority residents tend to be concentrated in neighborhoods with limited geographic access to these jobs. Using a randomized field experiment with public transit subsidies, I test whether this spatial mismatch of workers from jobs causes poor labor market outcomes. Randomly selected clients of a non-profit employment agency received a public transit subsidy to assist in applying to jobs and attending interviews with potential employers. I find evidence that the transit subsidies have a large, short-run effect in reducing unemployment durations with treatment causing the probability of finding employment within 40 days to increase by 9 percentage points, from 0.26 to 0.35. After 90 days, this difference narrows to a large but statistically insignificant 5 percentage points. I find weaker evidence that this decrease in unemployment duration results from more intense search behavior, with the transit subsidy group applying to more jobs and jobs further from home. To my knowledge, these results provide the first experimental confirmation that spatial mismatch of workers from jobs can cause adverse labor market outcomes for poor, urban individuals.

This study was presented last year at a conference on 'Research on Urban Mass Housing' that took place at Oxford. Nice programme, by the way.

Chart of the Day

obs.1 It's hard to believe Rio de Janeiro would be more polluted than Sao Paulo. I would love to hear a specialist analyze this.

obs2. You may explorer the data here, or navigate a map by clicking here.

The most polluted cities of the world's largest economies

[Image Credit: The Economist]

12 years in the American housing market

A few months ago, Kevin Quealy has published in the NYT this interactive chart showing the ups and downs in the American housing market over the last 12 years.

Related Links: 

• Squaring house prices
• Jiang Jun Examines Housing in China
• Housing Trends, Short and Long Term
• Mapping the US housing bubble: 2000-2010
• Which country has seen the highest decadal housing price increase?

Message of the Day

(via Luciana Golcman)

Assorted Links on Workforce and Education

1. Trends in the demand for educated labor and the gap between education supply and demand in US metropolitan areas
   
   
2. The changing demographics of Brazilian workforce [availabe in Portuguese only]
   
   
3. Female Labor Force Participation in Brazil (via Andres Marroquin)
   
   
4. Skills deficit holds India back
   
   
5. A Detailed Look at Workforce Skill Shortages in the US
   
   
6. OECD Report - Education at a Glance 2012 (via Drunkeynesian)
   
   
7. A new report by McKinsey on Jobs, pay, and skills around the world

[Click on the Image to enlarge it]

[Image Credit: McKinsey Global Institute]

Urban Picture

(Image credit: Peter Andrew, via Henry Grabar, TAC)

India's Urban Future

(Source: The Economist)

Related Links:

• Urbanization and economic growth
• Urban Growth Trajectories

Replay: UN Demographic Manuals On-line

Here is the link for the classical manuals and guides of demographic methods and techniques issued by the United Nations a long time ago. It presents a series of 23 manuals organized by the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat.

Paper for the weekend

Here is a paper I would like to have time to read. The abstract is great.


Ball, J. A. (1973). The zoo hypothesis. Icarus. Volume 19, Issue 3, Pages 347–349.

Abstract:

Extraterrestrial intelligent life may be almost ubiquitous. The apparent failure of such life to interact with us may be understood in terms of the hypothesis that they have set us aside as part of a wilderness area or zoo.

The is just one of the 11 Weirdest Solutions to the Fermi Paradox (ht @phgfsouza). There can't be a better solution than #4 !


Soundtrack:

Forecasting Migration

Andres Marroquin points to this chart showing long-term trends of net migration by continent. [By the way, the original report has many interesting charts that give a clear summary of global demographic trends]

When we hear the words “long-term migration” in the same sentence, it is impossible not to remember one prominent Achilles' heel in demographic studies: the inability to forecast long-term migration. Here is Willekens' opinion on this topic.

Why is it not possible to do long-term [migration] forecasts?

The data from statistical offices are not suitable for long-term migration forecasts. The reason is that these data document the outcome of migration flows – not the reasons behind them. Predictions on the basis of past behaviour are reliable when the system is stable, i.e. when conditions do not change and people respond to these conditions in the same way as people in the past. But conditions change, for instance when regulatory measures are taken to prevent migration flows, or events occur, like political changes in the country or natural disasters. (Frans Willekens)

Related Links:

• A new journal of Migration Studies, from Oxford University Press.
• Estimating global migration flow tables using place of birth data
• Changing Patterns and Determinants of Interprovincial Migration in China 1985–2000
• The Mystery of Declining Mobility in the USA

Chart of the Day

Where is the most expensive place to own a car?

Related Links:

• Parking Rates Worldwide
• Crowdsourcing road congestion data
• Gif of the Day: Traffic Reduction

The Future Cities Agenda, by M. Batty

Michael Batty's agenda for future cities (pdf).

The key issues on the agenda involve: automating cities which is an inevitable consequence of networking and the decentralisation of all aspects of computation across the globe; the dominance of migration as a force for local change; globalisation where everyone who uses the net is in some way part of a world city of sorts (with the implication that every city, no matter what size, has elements of ‘world city’ within it); the consequences of aging which will change the way we physically move around the city combined with the automation of transit and the private automobile; the rise of health care as a basic urban function; the demise of physical retailing and the ‘high street’, as much through online activity as through physical decentralisation; and, of course, the general automation of all sectors of the economy. Many problems confound this agenda and it is worth noting these as they are likely to dominate the extent to which we are able to build resilient and sustainable cities that are smart enough to enable them to function better than any of those we have created in the past.

Quote of the Day

"The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he’s one who asks the right questions."

(Claude Lévi-Strauss)

....and that's one of the hardest parts of doing science.

Demographic evolution of cities, 1950-2025

A nice chart showing the U.N. estimate for the demographic evolution of cities between 1950 and 2025. (via RC21 Network). 

Here are some other charts based on a similiar idea:

• Urban Hierarchy of 590 cities (1950-2050)
• Relative Rank of American States for Nine Decades (1790-1870)
• Urban hierarchy of the United States over time (1790-2000)
• The Richest Cities in the US in 1978 and Now

Assorted (off-topic) Links

1. Real Life Spambot 
   
   
2. Completion rates for MOOCs are really low. Still it shouldn't be ignored by top universities
   
   
3. Sax battle in NYC subway (via Chris Blattman)
   
   
4. Six Rules For Writing Clearly, by George Orwell
   
   
5. 10 most commonly searched terms on porn sites by country 
   
   
6. The ultimate recognition of merits in a scientific career (via Pedro Souza)

Chart of the Day

This is from the Annual Update on World Urbanization: 2013, by Wendell Cox.